Campus Timeline The following is a list of major events during the last school year on North American campuses: • May 2002: Following the "Passover massacre bombing M Israel, Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life launches its first Israel advocacy mission. The program draws 400 students for the five-day mission, and 80 remain for two weeks of advocacy training at Tel Aviv University. • May 1, 2002: The American Israel Public Affairs Committee rolls out an expanded campus program, tripling the size of its budget and staffing. The new initia- rive works with four key activists on each of 60 campuses that AIPAC feels produce future political leaders. The activists attend intense summer and winter training with advocates and policymakers. • Summer 2002: Twenty-six groups come together to form the Israel on Campus Coalition, a national coordi- nating body that provides high-profile speakers and advo- cacy training for students. • August 2002: The Jewish National Fund's Caravan for Democracy takes 13 students on a two-week training seminar to Israel. The students visit journalists, politicians and terror victims and learn how to write letters to the editor of newspapers and organize on campus. • August 2002: As part of its first Israel advocacy pro- gram, the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity trains 300 delegates at its international convention. • Aug. 20-25, 2002: Hillel holds its annual Charles Schusterman International Student Leaders Assembly at Camp Moshava in Honesdale, Pa. About 425 students plan campus activism for the year • September 2002: A sukk.ah at the University of Colorado is desecrated the day after Palestinian official Hanan Ashrawi makes a speech on campus. Groups of various faiths come together to rebuild it • Sept. 9, 2002: Rioting by anti-Israel protesters leads to the cancellation of a speech by former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Concordia University in Montreal. Afterward, campus administrators impose a temporary ban on Mideast-related activities. • Sept. 16, 2002: Academic Daniel Pipes unveils Campus Watch, a Web site to monitor professors and institutions he deems anti-Israel or anti-American. The site ignites a furor CAMPUS from page 30 dressed as Israeli soldiers shot squirt guns at other students pretending to be Palestinians at a checkpoint. This year, a Middle East dialogue group formed. At San Francisco State University — where anti-Israel protesters taunted Jewish students last spring by chanting "Hitler didn't finish the job" — a comparative religion course on Judaism, Islam and Christianity is "filled to capacity," said Marc Dollinger, acting director of the school's Jewish studies program. National Moves Major Jewish organizations have made noticeable inroads as well. Student in academia, with many denigrating it as McCarthyist. • Sept. 17, 2002: Harvard President Lawrence Summers blasts what he considers growing anti-Semitism on cam- pus, singling out a movement to force universities to divest their holdings in companies that do business with Israel. Other campus presidents, including those from Tufts, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan, follow Summers' lead in rejecting divestment. • October 2002: The second National Student Conference on the Palestine Solidarity Movement takes place at the U-M in Ann Arbor. The conference gains much media attention, but its divestment campaign flops over the course of the year amid administrative rejection and counter-petitions. • Oct. 7, 2002: The American Jewish Committee pub- lishes a full-page ad in the New York Times with 312 sig- natures of college presidents decrying intimidation of Jewish students on campus. • November 2002: Chabad announces a plan to expand from 61 to 81 full-time Chabad houses on campus. • November 2002: The annual General Assembly of the United Jewish Communities is complemented by a student 'Zionism Teach-in" that draws about 300 people. The event is run by the Jewish Agency for Israel and USD-Hagshania. • December 2002: Hillel director Richard Joel, one of the top leaders in organized Jewish life, announces he will leave his post to become president of Yeshiva University. • December 2002: Concordia University's student gov- ernment tries to remove Hiltel as a sanctioned student group for distributing material related to the Israel Defense Force. The move ultimately fails. • January 2003: Hillel launches Israel 101, a campaign to fill the next 101 days with innovative, student-led Israel programming. • March 2003: The Anti-Defamation League releases a survey showing 106 anti-Semitic incidents on college cam- puses in 2002, a 24 percent increase over the previous year. • March 27, 2003: Israel at Heart, a private initiative run by New York philanthropist Joey Low, begins its second annual two-week program to bring Israeli students to North American campuses to talk about living with terrorism. • March 30-April 1, 2003: At its annual policy confer- ence, AIPAC presents the White House with pro-Israel peti- tions bearing, 55,000 signatures from students at 60 colleges. activists with AIPAC, for example, collected 55,000 signatures on pro- Israel petitions at 60 college campus- es. The signatures were published in 50 campus newspapers with the spon- sorship of campus groups such as the College Democrats and College Republicans. Caravan for Democracy, a Jewish National Fund program highlighting Israel's democratic values, brought high-profile Israeli speakers to about 20 campuses this year. But the air of victory among many pro-Israel activists is tinged with ten- sion. When junior Daniel Frankenstein ran for student body president at the University of California at Berkeley last month, his peers spat on him and launched into anti-Zionist diatribes. Frankenstein ascribes his loss partly to the anti-Zionist campaign against him. But he still thinks pro-Israel activists on campus have scored some- thing of a victory this year. Despite these problems, we are crushing the pro-Palestinian forces, he said. "Last year, we were simply trying to cover our asses," he said, referring to the storm of activity that jarred Jewish students at Berkeley, site of some of the most intense campus anti-Israel propaganda. Too afraid to sport his Israeli soccer jersey on campus last year, Frankenstein now proudly wears pro- Israel clothing, attributing his confi- dence to advocacy training provided by AIPAC. ❑ FOR ILAN RAMON The name "Ilan" means tree. Before he died, astronaut Ilan Ramon of Israel sent the fol- lowing message back to earth... "1 call upon every Jew in the world to plant a tree in the land of Israel during the coming year. I would like to see 13 or l4 million new trees planted in Israel exactly one year from now, on the anniversary of th launching." —Ilan Ramon To plant a tree in Israel in honor of Ilan Ramon and his fellow astronauts, go to www.jewish.com . Click on Donations to Israel.